The Wine Curmudgeon

The 12 things an author worries about after writing a wine book

1. The truck carrying the books will crash on I-57 in Illinois, and 12 boxes will be scatterd across various Midwestern cornfields.

2. All of the friends you asked to review the book will rip it.

3. No one will show up at the signing you didn't really want to do, but did as a favor for the only friend who didn't write a scathing review.

4. You'll spend your weekends shipping book orders, but the money you'll take in won't be as much as the cost of mailing the books -- math never being your strong suit.

5. Someone will rate the book 1/2 star on Amazon, calling it the dumbest thing he has ever read.

6. No one will will write a comment calling the 1/2-star review the dumbest thing she has ever read.

7. You'll forget to send a copy of the book to the Library of Congress and the copyright office.

8.

Texas and Drink Local Wine's sixth annual Regional Wine Week

Regional wine week started yesterday, and what kind of co-founder and past president would I be if I didn't participate? So here are my links for this year's effort, focusing on the changes in Texas wine since I started writing about it:

• How much more accepted is Texas wine than just five years ago? The culinary students I spoke to on Thursday night at Dallas' El Centro College were interested not because they were supposed to be, but because they really wanted to know about Texas wine. Contrast this with the culinary students I taught at the Cordon Bleu, whose main interest in Texas wine came when I drew my not very accurate map of Texas on the board.

• Not only has Texas wine changed, but so have the people drinking Texas wine -- the focus of a story I wrote for the Texas Wine and Trail website. The new generation of Texas wine drinkers I talked to this fall were not "the older Anglos who have powered the local wine movement in the state since the 1990s, and doing yeoman work in the process. Rather, they were younger and, at Grapefest and especially at its People’s Choice wine tasting and competition, less white. I talked to a Chinese husband and wife who asked such detailed questions about what was going on and which wineries to visit that I couldn’t answer all of them."

• A French producer made sparkling wine in the state 30 years ago, though the winery eventually failed. Still, one has to admire the effort: "Texas-made sparkling wine is rare, even today. Thirty years ago, when there were only a handful of wineries in the state, it was much less practical. Sparkling wine is difficult, coslty, and time-consuming to make, requires top-notch grapes, and needs an established market for its products."

• The Hill Country is the focal point for Texas wine for most consumers, and it has undergone huge changes, too -- not only in the numer of wineries and quality of the wine, but in how the region sees wine in terms of tourism and its economy. Ten years ago, wine was an afterthought; today, Highway 290, with its dozens of wineries, could be a wine trail in California.

• And what would a Texas wine post be without reviews of Texas wine?

Wine review: Spy Valley Riesling 2011

One of the themes on the blog for the past couple of weeks has been value -- does a wine offer more to the consumer than it costs? In this, value is not about price, because not all cheap wine delivers value. Sometimes, it's just cheap.

It's also worth noting that a wine doesn't have to be cheap to offer value. Yes, it's more difficult for an expensive wine to do this, given that too many expensive wines are expensive because their reason for being is to be expensive. But it is certainly possible, and it happens more often than I acknowledge here.

One producer who consistently does this is New Zealand's Spy Valley, which as been making $15 and $20 wines that taste like they cost much more for as long as I have been writing about wine. I had one of those sublime, geeky wine experiences with the sauvignon blanc last year, and it's not even my favorite Spy Valley wine.

That would be the riesling ($18, purchased, 12.5%), which is as enjoyable as it is difficult to find. I only see it in Dallas every couple of years, given the vagaries of the three-tier system, so when I do see it, I buy it, even if it's a previous vintage. The producer is good enough so that doesn't matter.

The 2011 didn't let me down. It's not riesling like most consumers know it -- no sweet tea-like sugar or fruit flavors that taste like they came out of a can. Instead, it's a dry riesling, complex with layers of flavor that range from petrol on the nose (a classic riesling characteristic) to citrus and tropical in the front and middle. It's still fresh and almost aggressive after almost two years in bottle, which is a sign that it's only going to get better with age.

Serve this to someone who doesn't think they like riesling, and see if they change their mind. Highly recommended, and well worth the money.

Coming next week: The new Wine Curmudgeon website

That's the schedule, anyway. The new site will be easier to use and will look better, but will contain the same quality content that has made it one of the best-read English language wine sites on the Internet since 2007. The redesign will also give me the ability to add features, including an on-line store where you;ll be able to buy the Cheap Wine book.

I don't anticipate any problems, but one knows how these things often turn out. The web address will remain the same -- winecurmudgeon.com -- and everyone who subscribes to the blog via email and RSS feed should still receive the blog. If there are problems, like broken links or lost subscriptions, send me an email.

How low are wine prices these days? Awfully low

There has been a lot of news about wine prices holding steady lately, but it's been mostly economic -- studies, analysis, and so forth. That's the kind of stuff, as accurate as it is, that is sometimes painful for consumers to read. Not many of us worry too much about grape tonnage.

On the other hand, it's very easy for consumers to understand low prices, like these in a maling sent this week from Total Wine, the large regional retailer that wants to be a national chain:

•  Barefoot pinot noir for $4.97, almost 30 percent off the suggested retail price.

• The 2009 Groth Oakville cabernet sauvignon, a previous vintage, for 12 percent less than the current vintage's $57.

• Bogle chardonnay, a mainstay of the $10 Hall of Fame, for $6.97.

• A previous vintage of King Estate pinot gris, about as dependable as a $17 wine can be, for $11.97.

• Perrier-Jouet Grand Brut, a holiday Champagne staple, for $39.99 -- 20 percent off suggested retail.

Some of these, like the Barefoot and the Bogle, are likely loss leaders -- priced to lure customers to the store in the hope they'll buy other, more profitable, wines. But the prices also speak to two other trends. First, there's still a lot of unsold wine in the supply chain left over from the recession, and especially expensive wine. Until those wines are sold or disposed of (right, Treasury?) they will continue to drag down prices. The Total mailing also had previous vintages from Cakebread, Chimney Rock, and Silver Oak, each expensive and popular California producers.

Second, competition among retailers is fiercer than ever, with liquor superstores growing 15 percent since  2008, three times faster than their conventional counterparts. Total, with almost 100 stores, wants to double revenues to $2 billion by 2016, while BevMo, with 144 stores mostly in the west, wants to expand outside its base. All that competition -- which is especially brutal in Dallas, where Total opened last year -- means more discounting in an attempt to build market share. And that means more low prices.

Throw in the economy, which has been treading water for at least a year, and the idea that wine prices are going to go up anytime soon is as silly as the Wine Curmudgeon using wine scores on the blog.

For more on wine prices:
• Retailers and wine prices
• Wine prices in 2013, one final time
• The revolution in cheap pinot noir

Wine of the week: Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc-Viognier 2012

What's not to like about the Pine Ridge ($10, purchased, 12%)? It's cheap and it delivers so much more value than what it costs that I can't find a sufficient metaphor to describe how much more value that is.

The 2012 may be the best vintage ever, which is saying something given the wine's quality over the past decade. This California white wine blend offers peach fruit and a bit of floral from the viognier plus some citrus and a touch of honey from the chenin blanc. The chenin and viognier play off each other so well that it's hard to believe this wine didn't cost as much as one of Pine Ridge's $50 and $100 reds.

In this, it demonstrates one of the keys to finding great cheap wine from California. Forget the goofy names and cute labels; look for a less expensive wine from a producer who makes lots of expensive wine, be it Pine Ridge or Dry Creek. That's one of the lessons, by the way, in the Cheap Wine Book.

Highly recommended, and will almost certainly be included in the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame. Drink this chilled on its own or with almost any sort of white wine dish.

Winebits 301: Drink Local Wine, wine costs, wine experts

• Regional wine week: Drink Local Wine will hold its sixth annual Regional Wine Week from Oct. 6 to Oct. 12, which means everyone has a chance to be a wine writer. Maybe that's my legacy as one of the group's co-founders? Anyone –- professional wine writer to bloggers to wine drinkers with Facebook or Tumblr -- can send a link to their story or post about regional wine. This year, as a bonus, there's a photo contest with wine-related prizes. Over the past five years, writers from across the United States and Canada have posted stories and sent DLW links from blogs, websites, magazines, and newspapers about their favorite regional and local wines, wineries and events. I'll have my annual post on Oct. 6.

• Breaking down the cost of wine: One of the great mysteries about wine is how costs are allocated; that is, how much does each part of the process cost, whether grapes, bottling, marketing, and so forth. I cover this in the Cheap Wine Book (with a nifty graphic), and Jo Diaz, a long-time wine industry insider, has come up with similar numbers. What's important to note is how little the grapes cost -- about seven percent of a $50 bottle of wine.

• Who do consumers trust? Not, apparently, wine writers if one study is to be believed. We're so far down the list it's hardly worth mentioning. This has caused all sorts of kerfluffle among those of us who do this for a living, which I'm mostly ignoring as part of my new policy of not writing about wine writing. It's worth mentioning that the study's author, the respected John Gillespie, has said that the survey "may not fully capture market influence." But it sure is fun to write about, no?